May 17, 2007

David Morton on Mozambique

Mozambique lacks the resources or the will to properly dispose of the
hundreds of tons of deteriorating weaponry from a 16-year-long civil
war that officially ended in 1992.

Note that word, resources.

But, most importantly, all this talk about privatization and being on
the "right track" is very much beside the point. As Kaminski concedes,
one in six Mozambican adults is infected with HIV. "Appreciating the
change for the better takes some imagination," he writes. But you
cannot speak of "the change for the better" unless the discussion
starts with HIV. It's the only yardstick that matters in Mozambique,
and in the rest of southern Africa as well. Some 37,000 Mozambican
children contracted HIV in 2006, a jump of 60% over six years before.
Nearly four of every 10 adults in Beira, the country's second largest
city, are HIV-positive. Those are apocalyptic figures, however creative
your thinking.

Yes, there is indeed such a crisis, but what is it that will be needed to deal with it? Resources. So all that talk about privatization and being on the right track is the point, not beside it at all.

In the comments, MysticBear gives a very good potted history of the country (the accuracy I don't vouch for, I just rather liked it).

One thing is true though, one of the problems really was the nature of the colonial power, Portugal. You can argue whether they were there too long or not long enough but there was certainly no preparation for independence. From fighting vigorously (most especially in Angola) to buggering off home at the moment of the 1974 revolution back home was a turn on a sixpence. It's said that Mozambique was left with 33 university graduates at the moment of independence.

Now university graduates might not actually be necessary for the establishment of a decent economy but they certainly are if you're going to try and impose a Soviet style centralized one, run by the wise technocrats at the centre: rather presupposes the existence of said technocrats really.